Accuracy of Google Translate in Translation of English-Kiswahili and Kiswahili-English Newspaper Headlines
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Date
2024-02
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IJRISS
Abstract
This paper endeavors to determine the accuracy of Google Translate in newspaper headlines from Kiswahili
to English and vice versa, while using the human translator as the yardstick. Newspaper headlines in both
Kiswahili and English were identified and randomly selected. Three human translators were used to so that
the Google Translate translations could be measured against the human translators. The Relevance Theory
was applied during the research. This study made use of both Qualitative and Quantitative Research
Methodology and a Descriptive Research Design. Simple Random Sampling was used to select the data to
be used while Purposive Sampling was used when choosing the human translators. Fifty data sets were
tested, twenty-five of which were in Kiswahili while the rest were in English. Content analysis was
thereafter applied to interpret the translation output. The study found that the human translator is more
accurate than Google Translate. In addition, some human translations were found to slightly differ from
Google translations in the wording but still had the same meaning. The study focused on the
communicativeness of the translated data and found that some items translated exhibited meaning losses. It
was found that Google Translate was able to accurately render the meaning of 28/50 (56%) of the
instructions examined, implying that it is 56% accurate in translating Kiswahili to English and vice versa.
Mistranslations were found to be more prevalent in the Kiswahili source data. This therefore means that
sometimes miscommunication occurs as some items are not accurately rendered. This study thus offers
useful insight on areas of intervention in Machine Translation, particularly Google Translate.
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Kisilu, E. (2024). Accuracy of Google Translate in Translation of English-Kiswahili and Kiswahili-English Newspaper Headlines. International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, 8(2), 2205-2219.